The Mac OS X Snow Leopard git installer handles the copying of files and $PATH variables without any issue. If a user would like to verify that it was installed to the right directory, they can check in /usr/local/git.

I suggested the restart in order to ensure the $PATH variable is populated system-wide, and not for the user terminal session only.

Thanks you guys, I am very new to Mac os X just bought it few days back and I was struggling like anything to find out how to have git command from terminal. It nicely worked from me, use any package from google code project download and install and restart terminal it work like charm, no need of anything it does everything by itself, but if in any case it does allow you to use git from from terminal than they also provide .sh to set path just run it from terminal

Thank you Devin for this very clear and simple post. I have Mac with OS Lion. I downloaded a Maverick version of Git and had no idea why it was not working. I know nothing about programming and struggled for hours to fix it. Your post helped me the solve problem in seconds. Thank you so much.